Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Mansour announced that he has sold of his stakes in social media platforms including those in Twitter and Meta, and will direct his attention in building electric vehicles (EV) in Egypt.
Mansour, whose family’s wealth is valued at $6.8 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, plans to produce 15,000 electric vehicles in Egypt over the next three to five years through his company Al-Mansour Automotive. The company has a long-running partnership with General Motors and plans to import and market five models of EVs by 2025.
Mansour sounded quite optimistic about his EV venture in an interview in Sharm El-Sheikh where the United Nations climate change conference was being held this year. The billionaire is confident that his almost 50 years experience in the automotive sector will enable him understand what’s marketable and what’s not.
Egypt is home to about 104 million people and the use of EVs in Egypt is very limited and the Government of Egypt is also very keen to push its green agenda, with plans to build $20,000 EVs.
Mansour feels this is where all his experience along with the state-backed plans to build affordable vehicles along with a network of charging stations can transform his company and spearhead Egypt to the forefront in sustainability.
Mansour said he reduced his stake in Meta and sold all his shares in Twitter last year for a “good price.” The size of the stakes or the price at which he sold remained unspecified. The sale was with the intension to reduce the family’s exposure to equities by half and to infuse liquidity.
The billionaire reportedly plans to direct 10 percent of all his investments in to green projects, up from two percent currently by 2024. Today, he already owns a stake in one of Africa’s largest renewables producers and has interests in wind turbines in the UK.
Back in Egypt his family is developing a green housing project on a 3,000-acre (1,214 hectare) plot west of Cairo that will accommodate 250,000 inhabitants when finished and this is slated to be the first city in the MENA region to be built in full accordance with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
